Nice... So Semi Kalasa wrote her report not only to inform, but to front strength to the other Clans in the most efficient way possible... with a bit of bluffing, obfuscation and exaggeration.
I guess the Shark Foxes take to the road because that is all they have left. :-\
But is it possible that the Shark Foxes actually fared the worst of the IS Clans? During the Reavings, to be exact.
That's my question. Are the Sharks over-stating their losses or understating them?
First, let's review what we were told:
Wars of Reaving, pg102. The Burrock fleet, raiding the coreward deep periphery, arrives at Salonika to find a massive Diamond Shark refugee fleet. The fleet had been sitting there waiting for stragglers. There's a naval engagement, and the Burrocks are defeated; some are captured, but two of their JumpShips escape. The Sharks resume their... just sitting there... for two more weeks. They send a report by HPG which never reaches Vinton. Eventually another, massive Burrock fleet shows up. Although heavily outgunned, the Diamond Shark naval vessels attack rather than jumping out, and the civilians continue to just sit there. Eventually, the Sharks are overwhelmed and again electing not to jump out, the civilian vessels allow themselves to be boarded and sent to Tanis. Some later escape to tell their tale of woe.
Later, on pg113, we see a reference by the Burrocks in the Tanis system to their Diamond Shark isorla (the mobile naval facilities and battle equipment). Around this time, although the "final mass convoy" had already left, seven million Diamond Sharks remained on-world, including Loremaster Kalasa and Merchant Factor Lorenzo. A massive battle with the Coyotes was fought; although it's described in detail, the account is vague about the outcome, implying that most civilians were killed or deported. A strike force launches to battle the Coyoytes; it does heavy damage and never returns
to Vinton. Were they all destroyed, as she implies? Or did they escape to somewhere else? The story picks up a year later with the rescue of a few survivors by the Blood Spirits and Lorenzo's legendary voyage. Six months later, the Cobras mount their failed assault on the Tanis system. A year after
that, the Adders arrived and laid waste to the system, stopping only to execute the surrendering Burrocks and pillage Tanis of war materiel.
Comments: - Dead Burrocks tell no tales. The vast majority were executed, and any reports they may make are unlikely to be believed. So Semi Kalasa's version of events is the only one we're likely to hear.
- Limited physical evidence. Wrecked ships at Salonika, some Diamond Shark equipment at Tanis, presumably some Diamond Shark civilians at Tanis and Tamaron, and that's pretty much it. Supposedly this was all captured by force.
- Why didn't the Sharks jump out after the first attack? Or when the second attack started? Or when the second attack defeated their military? Why sit passively through the whole thing, with charged but unused KF drives?
- What were VIPs doing on Vinton? If the last major convoy had already left, then what was going to happen to the remaining Sharks? Were more convoys planned but cancelled?
- Just how many Shark civilians were killed? Where we get hard numbers, they're rarely very large. The Sharks beat back the Vipers, remember. The six million at Vinton at the start of the attack leaves 60 million unaccounted for, and we are never explicitly told what happens to those civilians-- she just strongly implies that they were almost all killed or captured.
The Diamond Sharks may be overstating their losses, leaving the reader to believe they suffered worse than they did. This might be to conceal the fact that they've established a much larger off-camera settlement than they're willing to admit. I've given this theory before, so I won't dwell on it. Except to say that Semi Kalasa said, rather poetically, that most of their Touman had already been moved "towards" the richer waters of the IS. Not
to the Inner Sphere, but towards it. We hear a lot about the major convoy that was interdicted, but what about the others before that? The Sharks had started relocating
years before. Assume everyone died at Vinton, and you still have sixty million Diamond Shark civilians unaccounted for.
If the Sharks have a major settlement packed with civilians and industry, the last thing they want are resource-starved IS clans marching in to stage Trials of Possession for it. And if the Sharks made a devil's bargain with the Society to buy time to complete their evacuation, then it follows that they'd need a cover story to explain Shark assets in Burrock hands. I like the Sharks so I hope they didn't pay the Burrocks off, but it's certainly possible. Either possibility explains their weird behavior at Salonika. It also fits with something else we knew already: the Diamond Sharks are the only clan to have systematically understated the size of their Touman pre-Jihad.
They might also be
understating their losses, to hide their weakness. If the bulk of their civilians were killed, and/or their industrial capacity destroyed, and/or their genetic legacies tampered with or lost... then it stands to reason that they'd want to conceal this from their rivals. The main problem with this explanation is that it doesn't explain Salonika. And Objectives: Clans paints a picture of a clan with a pretty good industrial base.
Note: Real life "Salonika" is better known as
Thessaloniki. The place has a marvelously rich history. So rich, in fact, that if we knew for a fact that Ben intended the name as a reference to unrevealed gems about the battle then it could still mean just about anything.
The Nova Cats, Horses, Wolves and Ravens would argue that with you. The Sharks are visibly better than those four.
Totally agree here. The Sharks had plenty of time to prepare for a migration, unlike these clans which had to improvise. They also had a massive merchant fleet available to conduct a migration.